But nevermind, I come bearing pictures. I went to Dr Sketchy’s today at the Butterfly Club in South Melbourne. Much fun. Being a digital artist most of the time, I forget how enjoyable physical media can be. Except when I become confused and look for the crtl-z when making a mistake.

The Butterfly Club is a cool place. Filled with old toys and paraphernalia from the 20’s to 50’s (as far as I can tell), the lighting and general ambiance makes me think of the living rooms of jazz musicians my mother visited when I was a kid. That or an anime serial killer’s abode…

There’s only a few minutes per sketch so it’s interesting to make the most of it. There was a theme, space, but honestly it’s tricky enough depicting a figure in a couple of minutes let alone adding a themed idea. I’m not complaining; I had fun, and an easy picture is hard to learn from… one of my favorite quotes- “ If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. ~Frank A. Clark”

On to the pictures!

Miss Peachy Keen:

I enjoyed drawing her curves and awesome costume…. I really wish I had more time to add details in the corset and folds in the cloth….

Miss Peachy Keen and the Paper Moon

Not so big on this one but other people seemed to like it-

Miss Peachy Keen strikes a pose

Miss Sugar Lee:

In full gold body paint! I didn’t have the colours to do it justice (Nor the skills to render shiny gold skin in five minutes) Her golden short-shorts/bathing suit/leotard thing was cool.

This one reminds me of some old-school comics-

Miss Sugar Lee, Space Explorer

This is the only one I’ve spent more than the alloted time on- I got home and just had to finish colouring it-

Miss Sugar Lee, Exotic Bounty Hunter

And now- I’m tired as hell. I’m at that stage of sickness where I’m nearly fine but activities kind of wear me out. Also I have “It’s Only A Paper Moon” stuck in my head- they played some awesome music. I’m off to find the Ella Fitzgerald version in my music collection- later!

Edit: Oh, and I won a voucher for Outre gallery- very gratifying I’ll definitely be going again…

So, here we are.

Last week saw the end of my two-year long job at a game company in Melbourne. While I enjoyed my time there, (and the respect I commanded with fellow nerds being able to say I’m a game developer), the long hours left me little time to create things on my own. Honestly, such responsibility for my own time is a little scary.

Although I think I have developed in self discipline, I’ll have to fend off the siren calls of my couch and Mass Effect. This blog is partly to motivate my own projects, and partly to create helpful tutorials. I realize there’s a thousand and one tutorials sites out there already but they tend to be a. long winded or b. wrong.

On my last day, my awesome co-workers presented me with a lovely hair pin and these:

Copic brand markers are famous for being the choice of top anime artists. They leave a very stong and smooth colour on the right type of paper and blend together in a way that can look almost airbrushed. The drawback of Copic markers is that they are very expensive… about AU $8 each (I assume about US $7). As you can imagine, I was quite thrilled

Here’s the test I did shortly afterwards…

I usually use Copics for colouring only, as you can see the lines are pretty thick. It depends on the look you’re after. I used about half the set in this picture.

Tutorials to come soon!